Many services can be purchased over the Internet. Some of these services only require a client to select an item from a catalog, provide payment for the item, or send other small amounts of information to the service provider. This type of information is usually sent as part of the interaction with the service provider, such as by typing. Other types of services require the client to send a considerable amount of information to the service provider. This type of information may be sent by e-mail or by uploading a file to the service provider. Files are typically uploaded either using an FTP protocol which is run independently of the WWW session, or by typing the file name(s) to a Java applet, downloaded from the service provider, as part of the session. Due to security requirements, current at this time, the file names must be manually typed for a Java applet to be able to read the files. One problem with files uploaded using an FTP protocol is that, in general, anybody may access these files.
One particular application, image manipulation, may require that large amounts of data in many separate files may be required to be sent to a service provider. All of the images which are to be manipulated/printed/developed must reach the service provider. High image quality of the final product of the service usually requires transmitting large files.
The above described solutions are cumbersome and may require a more than minimum level of computer literacy on the part of the customer. As can be appreciated, it would be desirable to provide a method of uploading large amounts of data, which method will be more user friendly than the above described methods.